Tzvetan Todorov at the RSA - brilliant lecture and conversation - Enlightenment 2.0

Here's a few notes from Tzvetan Todorov's lecture this evening at the RSA (Royal Society of Arts) entitled "In Defence of the Enlightenment". It was both thought provoking and timely.

Tzvetan stressed that the 18th Century Enlightenment had three broad themes:

1. Autonomy of the individual. This was not just anti-government or anti-religion but was about the right to choose. It was about the natural world, not the supernatural one, and its aim was the release of free will for both the individual and the community.

2. The real purpose of "freed" human beings . This had a distinct humanist theme, in that it was about the search for happiness and not just about religious salvation. It was about the welfare of all citizens and not about some kind of divine plan. It was thus about the real goals of humanity.

3. Universality. The Enlightenment view was that there are inalienable human rights, irrespective of culture or social standing. For example, all killing is wrong, even for a murderer (e.g. both private and public murder is not acceptable). In fact human universality should come before the law (so the rights of women were / are inalienable). Interestingly, this approach to "universal dignity" aroused 18th Century interest in travel and the understanding of other cultures.

So far so good. Unfortunately it got a little twisted.

The Enlightenment themes led positively to democracy and personal choice, but the promises were not always kept. Tzvetan suggested that both the French Revolution and Colonialism transgressed this noble set of goals by promoting both a kind of dictatorship and an "Imperial Policy".

He also noted Rousseau's view that the human desire for attention and self definition can release both good and evil equally.

Enlightenment thinking led to Liberal Democracy. But it also got subverted into Totalitarianism. It unortunately became a partial philosophical justification for World War. Tzvetan suggested a few "fault lines" in the thinking to support this view. One example is that "Scientism" is all - in other words that everything is explainable by Science. In his view at least one root of World War II was the "bad science" that there was such a thing as a superior race, and that therefore there was a need to attempt an "elimination of lower peoples"...

David Hume wrote that "Reason should be in the service of Passion". Enlightenment is not just about rationality or "machine man", nor should we suggest that "social engineering can solve all of our problems". Interestingly Tzvetan thought that Goya was the greatest Enlightenment painter, in that he depicted with great force both the light and the dark, the duality of being human.

Tzvetan's conclusion was that "Any strictly optimistic view of history is illusory".

So, what should Enlightenment thinking be today? It cannot be the same as the 18th cent, as an important human capability is for criticism where we can maintain the best and eliminate the rest. Tzvetan's view is that today's Enlightenment thinking should be about the true purpose of human beings - we should not just be defined by economic success, but be defined by a fulfilled life.

This may be an appropriate thought the week of the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit ...

Posted via web from mick's posterous